Economic Geography
University of Southampton
About the Project Overview: Offshore wind developments in the North Sea will require new models of community involvement to facilitate just decision making in complex social-ecological systems. This project examines whether existing consultation and stakeholder engagement processes are fit for purpose to deliver just decision making in offshore energy development. Up to 11% of the North Sea Basin may be within a wind farm area by 2050 (Waldman et al., 2026).
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Communications Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor Periklis Petropoulos, Dr Kyle Bottrill and Dr Hao Liu Optical fibre networks power all aspects of modern digital life, enabling AI applications and advanced wireless systems. This project explores the evolution of fibre infrastructure, using cutting-edge technologies to experimentally demonstrate emerging capabilities, paving the way for future high-performance networks that meet the demands of an increasingly connected world.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Prof. Ben Waterson and Dr Ioannis Kaparias About the project This project will create a simulated road environment game, to understand how people prioritise different road users, and train the next generation of artificial intelligence based control algorithms to make traffic lights operate the way that people want them to.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Bioengineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Tiina Roose and Siul Ruiz Soil is one of the most complex and important self-assembling organo-mineral composites in the world. All human food supply, ecosystem and infrastructure services depend on soil, yet we have very little understanding of what happens in soil. Developing an understanding of soil composition is important, as climate change is likely to alter soil function.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Bioengineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Tiina Roose and Siul Ruiz Soil is one of the most complex and important self-assembling organo-mineral composites in the world. All human food supply, ecosystem and infrastructure services depend on soil. Movements of water into, within and out of soil are especially important.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Electronic Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor David Thomson and Dr Bharat Pant This project will focus on research into the next generation of optical data communication technology enabling key applications such as high-performance computing and artificial intelligence to thrive. Many aspects of modern life have become reliant on high bandwidth data communication, pushing the associated technology to its performance limits and contributing significantly to global energy use.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory team: Prof. Ben Waterson This project will use artificial intelligence (machine learning) techniques to establish new models of pedestrian, cyclist and scooter rider path prediction for use in complex urban environments. Established models of crowd movements predict the paths that pedestrians take based on a cumulative set of forces resulting from forecast future interactions.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Electronic Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Yoshishige Tsuchiya, Dr Bruce Ou and Prof Jize Yan Physical reservoir computing is attracting much attention as a simple and energy-efficient option of neuromorphic computing and our focus is to use Micro or Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS/NEMS) technologies to meet the system requirements of low-power consumption, high device density for high speed processing, and suitable nonlinearity and memory capacity at the same time.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Shelly Vishwakarma This project explores how British Sign Language users could interact with healthcare and smart devices with greater privacy, choice and independence. Using radar-centric multimodal AI, the project will study how signing movements can be recognised and translated without relying on cameras, speech or wearable sensors. It aims to complement, not replace, qualified interpreters.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Electronic Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Prof David Thomson, Prof Professor Goran Mashanovich & Dr Bharat Pant Closing Date: 30 September 2026 This project will focus on the development of reliable and efficient programmable photonic integrated circuits (PICs) on a silicon photonics platform.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Data Analysis
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr. David J Rowe and Professor Goran Mashanovich This PhD project focuses on developing silicon photonic sensors that can detect early biomarkers of sepsis in children - quickly, accurately, and at the point of care. Help revolutionise paediatric healthcare by developing cutting-edge silicon photonic sensors for early sepsis detection.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Atomic Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor Chris-Kriton Skylaris and Dr Sergio Vernuccio This project examines how sodium‑ion batteries can overcome limitations in capacity and cycling lifetime to rival lithium‑ion batteries. It will parameterize the Faraday Institution multiscale modelling project’s atomistic-to-continuum simulations specifically for sodium-ion systems, discovering materials for next-generation sodium-ion batteries.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory team: Dr Srinandan Dasmahapatra Recognising patterns in data to simulate their distributions is a machine learning task that can be enhanced by generating measurement samples from quantum states that are suitably prepared by parameterised quantum circuits. By exploiting symmetry properties, the project will build efficient quantum generative models that have a wide range of applications.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 September 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Aerospace Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Zheng-Tong Xie We live in a rapidly changing world. It is crucial that we understand such a complex system and build reliable predictive tools in time. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model includes buildings and abrupt terrains in a city-scale environment. It aims to understand across-scale physical processes with a focus on metre to kilometre scales and develop a fast CFD tool.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 1 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Communications Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Chao Xu This project will explore the combination of Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces (SIM) and Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) in the context of Space-Air-Ground Integrated Network (SAGIN) applications. Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces (SIM) are composed of multiple layers of programmable meta-atoms that can dynamically manipulate electromagnetic (EM) waves as they propagate through them.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 1 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Architecture
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Masoud Sajjadian, Climate Change is transforming how homes are designed or refurbished to protect occupants from extreme weather conditions. This project will investigate how adaptive and maladaptive housing design interventions affect public health in the UK. The project aims to generate evidence that supports healthier and more climate-resilient housing.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 9 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr. Sasan Mahmoodi and Professor Brigitte Vollmer Hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) affects babies' brains during the childbirth due to shortages of oxygen. Using Artificial Intelligence techniques, HIE disease is diagnosed much earlier than two years which is the current normal practice in hospitals. As a result of HIE early detection, then early interventions can be applied to improve the babies health.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 14 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Understanding how cells maintain tissue health or trigger irreversible decline is a frontier challenge in biomedical science. Using lung fibrosis as a primary disease model, this project investigates the core molecular networks controlling cellular fate, tissue regeneration, and scarring. This is a laboratory-based project perfectly suited for an ambitious experimentalist eager to master next-generation workflows.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 18 October 2026
- Funding
- Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Cyber Security
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Erisa Karafili This project develops AI-enhanced threat-modelling techniques to improve the cybersecurity and resilience of autonomous vehicles. It analyses vulnerabilities in AI-driven sensing and decision systems, models complex adversarial interactions, and designs adaptive detection and mitigation strategies, with applicability to other safety-critical domains.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 27 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Aerospace Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr. Isha Gupta This project investigates the failure mechanics of next-generation thermal barrier coatings produced by suspension plasma spray and solution precursor plasma spray, an area where computational modelling remains largely unexplored. It will develop multiphysics models of degradation under extreme thermal and chemical conditions to guide high-performance coating design for aerospace and energy.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 31 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Erisa Karafili and Enrico Gerding The project investigates how distributed sensing systems can remain trustworthy and operational when facing intelligent, coordinated adversaries. It develops an AI-driven trust scoring framework to detect compromised and colluding sensors, enhancing resilience, accuracy, and decision-making in critical defence sensing applications.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 31 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Aerospace Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Alexander Wittig, Dr Sergio Araujo-Estrada and Dr Jorn Cheney This project aims to overcome the challenges of testing spacecraft control algorithms on real hardware in Earth-based environments.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 1 November 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor Paul Kemp and Dr Andrew Vowles Freshwater ecosystems are the most degraded on the planet and the species they support the most threatened. Innovative technology can help halt biodiversity loss and degradation of freshwater habitats. This project will employ computer science to solve challenges in identifying and managing dams and weirs that fragment critical river habitat.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 November 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Electrical Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Daniel Zabek This project focuses on exploring high-precision lithographic fabrication techniques for the development of multifunctional material structures at the nanoscale, with applications in wireless energy and information transfer, and in biomedicine.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 31 December 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Acoustics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr. Giacomo Squicciarini, prof. Tim Waters and Dr. Michal Kalkowski This project examines how impact sounds in cricket, golf, and tennis reveal the physics and performance quality of each strike. Through acoustic analysis, physics based models, and machine learning, it aims to reveal the information hidden in these acoustic signals.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 31 December 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Biochemistry
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor Yannis Ieropoulos The project is about a novel sensing-computing platform that (a) employs living cells, and (b) is energetically autonomous. The main target outcome is the creation of a radically new kind of information processing technology that is not simply inspired by biochemical processes in living systems, but actually uses living microbial cells, growing as biofilms on electrodes inside novel bioelectrochemical systems.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 31 March 2027
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Yasir Noori This project aims to shape the future of semiconductor manufacturing by using deep learning to predict nanoscale defects before they occur. It combines nano lithography, plasma etching, material deposition, with deep learning (AI) modelling, with access to Southampton’s cleanrooms, IRIDIS supercomputing, collaboration with global leaders in chip manufacturing and commercialisation opportunities.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 1 June 2027
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory team: Professor Goran Mashanovich, Dr. Milos Nedeljkovic and Dr. David Rowe This PhD applies AI to inverse design, a method that works backwards from desired performance to generate efficient photonic circuits. You'll develop algorithms that intelligently explore vast design spaces, enabling compact, manufacturable light-based chips.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr. Zhiwu Huang In a world increasingly dominated by AI-generated content, this PhD project will research advanced AI methodologies for detection and localization of manipulated imagery. You’ll push the frontiers of computer vision and data forensics, creating tools that strengthen digital authenticity, security, and global trust in visual information.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Control Systems
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor Austin Taranta and Dr. Leonard Budd A miles-long glass tube thinner than a human hair enshrouds delicate glass capillaries with sub-micron thickness; this is Antiresonant hollow-core optical fibre, the next generation of fibre technology already creating new fields in data, quantum, sensing and healthcare. This project explores deploying these novel fibres in compact coils for sensing.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team - Dr. Sasan Mahmoodi About the project Machine learning as well as deep learning techniques are employed in this project to design novel biometric recognition systems. Biometrics included in this type of study are: Face, Face profile, Ear, Iris, Gait, Palmprint, Fingerprint and body shape. Cutting-edge artificial intelligence methods and techniques are employed to develop novel biometric systems.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Cyber Security
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Firman Simanjuntak and Dr Basel Halak Memristors mimic how the brain learns—offering low-cost, secure, and energy-efficient computing. This PhD tackles challenges limiting their adoption, from ageing to variability, to create unforgeable, self-identifying chips.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Communications Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Kyle Bottrill and Prof Periklis Petropoulos The space communication environment is like no other, subjecting data-carrying lasers to immense transmission distances, substantial Doppler shifts and, in some cases, a highly turbulent atmosphere. To help overcome these challenges, in this project you will develop advanced optical amplifiers for the exciting era of satellite lasercom on the horizon.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Computer Science
University of Southampton
About the Project This proposed PhD project will focus on advancing automated assessment in secondary or tertiary mathematics education through the use of modern e-assessment software like STACK – a computer algebra–based assessment system. Prospective candidates are invited to propose their own precise research project, and may wish to refer to the collaboratively derived research agenda published in Kinnear et al. (2022).
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Electromagnetism
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Giorgio Adamo and Dr Eric Plum Systems where coherence establishes spontaneously, such as lasers, Bose-Einstein condensates, superradiant emitters and time crystals, are important for classical and quantum technologies. Photonic metamaterials/metasurfaces are ideal platforms to foster the emergence of coherent phenomena. This project will study how coupling between nanostructures can mediate coherence and enable future photonic devices.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Firman Simanjuntak and Prof Mark Zwolinski This PhD project develops ultra-low power, DVS-free computer vision hardware by creating event-based chips using nanofabrication. The work spans chip building, signal encoding, and real-world system demonstration, aiming to replace costly DVS cameras and enable fast, efficient AI image processing with conventional cameras.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Communications Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Kyle Bottrill, Prof Periklis Petropoulos and Dr Debparna Majumder Just as starlight falling on the surface of the Earth twinkles when affected by atmospheric turbulence, so too do optical communication signals transmitted from an orbiting satellite to a ground-station. In this project, you will design and fabricate photonic lantern-based turbulence mitigation systems to enable the next-generation of lasercom.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Electrical Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Milos Nedeljkovic and Professor Callum Littlejohns This project’s aim is to explore the integration of graphene with Silicon Photonic circuits to create fast and sensitive photodetectors for the mid-infrared (mid-IR) region, a key wavelength range for detecting gases and molecules. You'll be responsible for designing, fabricating, and testing these new devices.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Electrical Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Prof Anna Peacock and Prof David Thomson This project seeks to develop a simple, low-cost laser materials processing procedure to fabricate high quality polysilicon photonic platforms that will ease issues associated with optoelectronic integration.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Electromagnetism
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Prof Kevin MacDonald, Dr Ben Mills and Prof Nikolay Zheludev Focused ion beam (FIB) milling is a key enabling technology in physical sciences research and industrial micro/nanotech manufacturing. This project will develop and apply deep learning techniques to accelerate and improve FIB nanofabrication processes for advanced photonic materials, in turn enhancing their optical performance and energy efficiency.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory team: Haris Moazam Sheikh This project will develop a multi-scale surrogate modeling framework to optimize passive surface textures (like dimples) for maximum fluid drag reduction. By enabling efficient shape optimization and identifying critical flow parameters, this research seeks to resolve conflicting results and advance the theoretical understanding and practical application of cost-effective flow control in transportation.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Data Analysis
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor Goran Mashanovich and Dr. Milos Nedeljkovic This project explores compact mid-infrared (mid-IR) LiDAR systems for gas sensing. You’ll design and prototype photonic devices that detect and map trace gases using their unique infrared fingerprints.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Aerospace Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr. Swathi Krishna and Prof. David Toal This PhD project will explore gust–wing interactions in vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). Integrating computational fluid dynamics, data-driven modelling, and experiments on a custom-built VAWT rig, you will examine how gusts influence blade aerodynamics in curvilinear flows and develop predictive tools to mitigate their adverse effects.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Aerospace Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Haris Moazam Sheikh About the project Mechanical metamaterials are engineered structures with extraordinary properties driven by geometry, not composition. This PhD project will pioneer a multi-scale framework combining topology morphing and surrogate modeling to streamline design and enable defect engineering, unlocking real-world metamaterial applications in ultralight, reconfigurable, and high-performance materials.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr. Tan Viet Tuyen Nguyen This project explores the development of a Multimodal Large Language Model that empowers robots to understand and respond to humans through vision, language, and other sensory data. By enabling natural, adaptive, and context-aware communication, the research advances the next generation of intelligent, human-centered robotic systems.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Dong-Yang WANG This project will be focusing on the research on non-Hermitian topological physics. Frontier research topics of exceptional point/surfaces, non-Hermitian skin effect, and catastrophe theory will be pursued. Topological band theory serves as a fundamental framework to generate new phase of matter with novel material properties.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Dong-Yang WANG This project will be designing and building topological photonic crystals on silicon chips, aiming to promote important applications such as optical imaging, sensing, and computing. Topological photonics is an intriguing research direction to use topological theory for developing new optical materials.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory team: Dr Firman Simanjuntak This PhD project aims to develop error-tolerant AI processors for cryogenic and space electronics using optomemristor technology, which mimics neural networks and offers ultra-fast, low-power computing. Collaboration with Von Ardenne GmbH provides industrial insights into material processing and photonic integration for advanced chip design.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Electromagnetism
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Giorgio Adamo, Dr Nikitas Papasimakis and Dr Dong-Yang Wang Recent developments in quantum materials and topological design principles are transforming the way we control the flow of light and charges.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Electromagnetism
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Prof Nikolay I. Zheludev, Prof Kevin MacDonald and Dr Eric Plum Time crystals are an eagerly sought phase of matter in which time-translation symmetry is broken. This project will explore the exciting physics of time crystals and the foundations of ‘timetronics’, an information and data technology relying on the unique functionalities of this sophisticated yet esoteric state of matter.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Electromagnetism
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Prof Kevin MacDonald and Prof Nikolay Zheludev Optical imaging and metrology techniques now routinely break the classical diffraction limit on resolution. This project will reach further still: leveraging recent advances in the subwavelength structure of light fields, metamaterials, information theory and artificial intelligence to achieve sub-nanometric (atomic scale!) optical measurement precision.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Prof. Austin Taranta, Dr. Gianluca Guerra, Dr. Gregory Jasion and Dr. Ian Davidson Dive into the mysterious world of polarization in antiresonant hollow core fibres, where conventional wisdom is turned on its head, and unexpected phenomena emerge every day. Through your insights and innovation, you will shape the future of this cutting-edge technology from data centres, to high-power lasers, to space systems.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Applied Chemistry
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Sergio Vernuccio and Prof Chris Skylaris This project aims to rationally design efficient heterogeneous catalysts for sustainable application, including photocatalytic transformation for hydrogen production and CO₂ reduction. Objectives include analysing catalyst surface chemistry, building predictive microkinetic models, and synthesizing new catalyst architectures.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Electrical Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory team: Prof Anna Peacock & Dr Meng Huang Closing date 31 October 2026 This project seeks to develop compact and power efficient nonlinear silicon photonics devices for use in wide ranging applications such as telecommunications, medicine and spectroscopy. The designs will focus on robust and low-loss component-to-component interconnection, to improve the sustainability and practicality of future photonic systems.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Electronic Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor Austin Taranta, Professor Natallie Wheeler and Dr. Hesameddin Mohammadi Hollow core fibres are transforming applications in communications, sensing, and high-power laser delivery. The aim of this project is to study the fundamental reactions that control the stability and lifetime of these novel fibres which guide light through a gas-filled core instead of solid glass.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Data Analysis
University of Southampton
About the Project Closing date: 31 December 2026 Supervisory Team: Professor Goran Mashanovich, Dr. Milos Nedeljkovic and Dr. David Rowe About the project Help transform how medicines are monitored and delivered. This project develops silicon photonic sensors that use mid-infrared light to measure drug levels instantly at the point of care.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Applied Mathematics
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Dong-Yang WANG This project will explore the use of photonic quasicrystals in building higher-dimensional topological phases. The research covers the mathematical framework development, photonic quasicrystals design, energy band calculation, sample fabrication, and experimental characterization. Topological photonics is a rising field of research to embed topological invariants in optical materials.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Aerospace Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr. Swathi Krishna and Dr. Ivo Peters This PhD project might be for you if you are concerned about the growing microplastic contamination in our water bodies. This project involves the investigation of how bubbles and vortices can be harnessed to extract microplastics from water.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Aerospace Engineering
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory team: Dr. Haris Moazam Sheikh This project will develop a multi-scale optimization framework using surrogate modelling and topology morphing techniques to overcome the high cost of Vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) design. It will create VAWTs optimized specifically for array performance, harnessing both lift and drag effects. This will significantly improve the viability of commercially viable urban wind farms.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Artificial Intelligence
University of Southampton
About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Mohammad Soorati and Prof Stephen Beers This project aims to build an AI-driven system that analyses live-cell microscopy videos showing how immune cells attack cancer cells. The videos are generated in a biology lab where each experiment can be precisely controlled.
- Location
- Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)